Supporters of religious groups chant slogans during a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Lahore, Pakistan, last Friday. Photo: Mohsin Raza/ReutersSupporters of religious groups chant slogans during a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Lahore, Pakistan, last Friday. Photo: Mohsin Raza/Reuters

Recent events in France have been portrayed as having to do with freedom of expression, however, also underlying this conflict appears to be what Tim Stanley refers to in The Telegraph of January 9 as “aggressive secularism”.

In France, this brand of secularism, or laïcité, seems to have turned into yet another ideology, which holds the individual as supreme and actively discourages religious sentiment.

George Holyoake, who coined the term in the 1850s, defined secularism as “the moral duty of man in this life deduced from considerations which pertain to this life alone”.

In other words, the original idea, and the primary meaning of secularisation today, is the removing of religious influences from laws and from other matters of State.

My claim, here, is that, in France, far from omitting God from moral debate, journalists, legislators and the public seem to give religious matters special consideration. These matters are, in fact, attributed with a special negative value and public feeling seems to include a general dislike of religion.

Freedom of expression, in France and everywhere else, is nowhere near absolute.

If the images in Charlie Hebdo had represented living individ-uals, they would have incurred legal action. Individuals (but not their gods, prophets or priests), then, are protected by laws and one cannot make such mockery of them.

The distinction, one assumes, lies in the fact that individuals can be harmed but not religious figures. All this very much fits in with Holyoake’s criterion for moral consideration.

At the same time, France did not offer an amnesty to Edward Snowden, who got into trouble for expressing things which very much “pertain to this life alone”. Snowden’s revelations have to do with our privacy, they uncover the kind of political structure we have and they affect our sense of security.

Only 150,000 signed a petition requesting amnesty for Snowden in France, and 3.7 million came out to support the right to blasphemy. It seems that the form of secularism that France has evolved, rather than limiting itself to worldly considerations alone, puts a special emphasis on negating religion.

These events seem to suggest that the French are far more interested in retaining the right to make mockery of religious figures than in their own privacy and security.

This form of secularism, however, is not true to the spirit of its founders, whose concern was not to deny or ridicule religion but to eliminate its influence over the daily running of people’s lives.

There are individuals who hold their gods, prophets and priests in much higher regard than they do themselves

“Sincere doubt is as much entitled to respect as sincere belief,” wrote Holyoake, citing Thomas Carlyle, suggesting that, for the first secularists,it was given that faith was tobe respected.

Can the same be said for Charlie Hebdo and all those who identified so closely with the magazine?

Originally, secularism was concerned with basing decisions upon reason and dialogue. Rather than appealing to religious authority or scripture, secularists proposed considering the facts and reasoning out a course of action.

Now, assume that policymakers and legislators in France knew that Charlie Hebdo causes offence to a large section ofthe population.

Similar satirisation, but of living individuals, as we have seen, is acknowledged to be damaging and offensive and legislation exists which prohibits it.

We can also infer that some individuals value their gods, prophets and priests more highly than they value themselves as individuals. In fact, they have repeatedly told us that they are willing to die for their faith.

We have heard of several warnings of imminent attacks on Charlie Hebdo and we know that means real lives are in danger.

What reason can there be to hold so tight to the right to blaspheme when so little of value is gained by it and so many more worldly considerations – loss of life, social harmony and peace –are at stake?

If one leaves religion out of the discussion altogether then the reasonable thing to do, in the circumstances, is to ban the publication of such images, at least temporarily, until a happier solution can be found.

Furthermore, on what grounds do modern secularists hold the individual unassailable but not his/her gods, when we can clearly see that, for a vast number of people, the exact reverse is true?

The belief that the individual is sacrosanct, the locus of all intrinsic value, is a legacy of European history and philosophy. It is not a product of reason alone but of bias.

Friedrich Nietzsche declared God dead and many assumed there was nothing left that was larger than the individual and, thus, worth believing in.

Yet, many secularists hold such ideals as social harmony and global peace, at least on a par with individual freedoms and rights.

Certainly, those freedoms that do not add much value to the individual’s life, such as the right to blaspheme, could be curtailed, perhaps, for the sake of these ideals. Indeed, France too has its anti-hate laws, designed for that very reason.

It is my belief that the people marching in France on January 11 did so not so much in support of freedom of expression and the right to blaspheme but more out of fear that a militant Islam might someday sweep over Europe, reducing to nothing all of our hard-won freedoms.

In other words, what is feared is the very thing targeted by the first secularists: the rule of religion over our states.

This time round, however, it is the non-religious who have the upper hand, here in Europe at least, hence Stanley’s label aggressive secularism.

If Carlyle were writing today, perhaps he would implore us to have a little more respect for belief.

I think it is important at this juncture that we do not commit the same injustices that the early secularists decried, by imposing our own biases and (dis)beliefs upon all.

There are individuals who hold their gods, prophets and priests in much higher regard than they do themselves and to mock these people’s faith is to mock them personally.

What makes us so convinced that our new religion, the cult of the ego, is indeed the true faith?

Colette Sciberras is a teacher of philosophy at Giovanni Curmi Higher Secondary.

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